Two thirds of you reading this article will be women. Where are you reading it right now? If you're in an arts office, look around you – can you see more women than men at work? Do you think those women are getting paid less than the men?

My recent foray into the statistics on women working in the arts would suggest that this is probable. And there was me hoping that our egalitarian arts world was immune to the rest of the working world's gender pay differentials – we speak a lot about access and barriers in this sector, but have we not overcome the gender barrier yet?

It was Kira Cochrane's Guardian article on women in the media that got me digging deeper into the subject. There's a common observation that it's women who 'do' the arts managing, directed by male decision-makers. But is it true?

The first problem I came up against was the scant information available on women in the arts workforce. The second was that data collected often merged female arts practitioners with arts managers, or bundled in the more overtly commercial sectors of the creative industries such as film, publishing and advertising, skewing the figures. That aside, what I did find made for a fascinating read.

a-n's Making a Living as an Artist report found that the mean annual pay for men in the arts is £23,492, and for women £19,344. Not only are both levels pitifully low, but they're far from equal. Creative Blueprint found the same – in cultural heritage for example, 70% of women earn less than £20,000 compared to 57% of men, with 11% of women earning more than £29,000, compared to 26% of men.

Research agreed that women are not only more qualified than men in the arts, but their overall numbers are increasing. However, Clore's Women in leadership in the creative and cultural sector report finds 2.5 male leaders to every female leader and that women are outnumbered by men in the most senior roles.

And of those leading women only 75% want to stay in their roles, compared to 100% of leading men. Of the Guardian Culture Professionals readership, 22.3% of male respondents are at director/CEO level, compared to 12.4% of female respondents, with women holding more managerial roles than men (33% vs 22.2%).

These headline findings inevitably lead to many questions.

Firstly, pay. Do female practitioners earn less than men because they don't have the same confidence to charge more? Anecdotally, women don't ask for pay rises as men do – could the same be applied when it comes to pricing work, or is the art market not awarding the same financial value to female works? Are female management freelancers charging a lower daily rate? If they are, do they know they are, and who is going to tell them? Do women chase a different reward than a larger pay packet?

Secondly, career progression. Are women working more laterally? Is the vertical career trajectory not for us? Do women exert influence from a different place to men – via networks, social media, by working in support roles, by reaching a level in our career they are happy with and playing to our strengths from that position? It might be the case that women want to work in a different way to men or that they're better suited to certain roles rather than others.

Or this might be masking a darker gender politic. Does it matter that reports have merged the practitioner with the manager? It's a fact of many an artist's career that an administration job will run alongside their practice, but are there distinct issues that emerge from both these roles that are obscured by their amalgamation?

Sometimes I wonder where the men I met at the foot of the arts career ladder have got to in subsequent years as I don't see them in the middle bracket; rather they seem to leapfrog to the top. It could be that the family-starting career break, common to many women, is to blame, and that men use this time to overtake women. Perhaps those women returning to the workforce at the same career level are effectively giving men a leg up.

Not all women have children, of course, and some might have a work/life balance that allows equal childcare with a partner or full time work – there's no family break argument in these scenarios.

We're working in changing times and we must ask ourselves what the inevitable cuts to the arts workforce mean for its female cohort. Reduced hours might finally give meaning to flexible working for those with families or dual careers, and if there is stagnation in the job market due to redundancy or decreasing opportunities, I wonder if it will address the imbalance.

Thirdly, leadership. Why do women leaders not want to stay in a leadership role? What's not working for them? Do leading in the wings of the arts, or at the delivery end, mean that women in fact have greater reach and impact?

ACE's What is the Creative Case for diversity? report includes women as one of its minority groups targeted for special attention. As a result of its research, Skillset decided to focus its training bursaries and masterclass programme on women. We have Clore supporting women arts leaders, but whom else? And how safe are such schemes with today's budget reductions? Skillset has created a list of industry commitments to "redress the imbalances between men and women" – a similar pro-women manifesto for the arts is a possibility.

It's 2012 and the arts sector is apparently no different to any other when it comes to how it treats women. Yes, I'm playing devil's advocate with those questions and no, I'm not comfortable with attributing any of the differentials in the arts sector to gender determinism or homogenisation.

But if we are to achieve gender equality in the arts then we all share a responsibility to make it happen. To do so, we need to get to the bottom of these apparent differences. My final question then: how do we do this?

Cara Courage is an arts and culture consultant, specialising in visual arts and architecture – visit www.caracourage.net and follow her on Twitter @caracourage